More than a third of the employees dismissed due to technical unemployment at the former Volkswagen plant in Kaluga were forced to resign by the new Russian owners using a series of “dirty tactics”, one of the trade unionists representing them accuses, The Moscow Times quotes. .

“Since October 2023, the management of the company has used various dirty tricks to force staff to leave,” the MPRA union said in a statement posted on VKontakte, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook.

“They (the management) canceled transportation for workers from July 2023, forced workers to come to the factory without work, and significantly reduced wages,” the union representative also noted, adding that since then, about 1,300 of the factory’s 3,700 workers have quit.

He also accused that another 500 employees were dragged into a dead end by the management of the plant, calling them to work without any activity. The Kaluga plant was Volkswagen’s “flagship” plant in Russia with a production capacity of 225,000 cars per year.

The union accuses both the management of the company that absorbed the factory of “misleading” the regional and federal authorities of Russia about the production figures, and the Kremlin and the office of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin of evading answers to their written complaints.

“Everything looks beautiful on central television, but in reality [fabrica] is in complete ruin and despair,” the MPRA statement added. “This is the growth of Russia’s GDP due to pseudo-production and speculative resale of some [autoturisme] Chinese?” he asked rhetorically.

The Volkswagen plant in Russia was bought by a car dealer

Volkswagen was part of the first wave of foreign companies to announce they would leave the Russian market after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, announcing on March 3, 2022, that it would end production and sales of cars in the country led by Vladimir Putin. .

But as with other foreign companies, the sale process has been difficult, and Volkswagen has also faced several lawsuits filed by its former Russian partners seeking various claims from the German automaker.

In March of this year, Russian justice froze all Volkswagen assets in the country until the disputes were settled.

On May 20, Volkswagen finally announced that it was able to complete the sale of its Kaluga plant and its local subsidiaries to Art-Finance LLC, which is backed by local car dealer Avilon.

The sources, who wished to remain anonymous, estimated the deal at 125 million euros.

However, Volkswagen clarified at the time that the deal included production facilities in Kaluga, distribution activities and after-sales service, financial and logistics services with all employees.